Saturday Night Live Meets Shakespeare: Rachel Dratch on Her Tap-Dancing Role in Love’s Labour’s Lost

“Maybe now that people know I tap as well as I do, who knows what’s next for me on Broadway,” said Rachel Dratch, referring to her tap-dancing scene in the Public Theater’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Yes, tap dancing in a Shakespeare play. And yes, Saturday Night Live alum Rachel Dratch in a Shakespeare play.

“That was a big surprise, one of many,” Dratch said about that glitzy dance routine on opening night of this delightfully wacky version of the early Shakespeare play, which here is set at a college reunion at a resort, and scored to pop music performed by a group of young Broadway talents.

Even being cast was a surprise. “I just got the dream phone call, ‘You have an offer to do Shakespeare in the Park,’” Dratch told VF Daily. She didn’t hesitate. “I knew it was a musical, I knew I had a small part, and so I wouldn’t have to be busting out into a solo,” she said. “But this has been on my dream list for years. So when I got this call, I wasn’t questioning it. I was, just, ‘Yay!’”

The boys-meet-girls musical adaptation is from the wildly imaginative Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman. “The music of the girls is sort of thinking about the Go-Gos, and even a little Sleigh Bells,” Timbers told VF Daily. “And then the boys, you know, was sort of all over the map; it was a little pop theater, a little INXS.”

During previews they’ve experienced the usual trials of outdoor theater. “We had a raccoon, which was terrifying and very large. And we’ve had a lot of rainstorms,” Timbers said. And there was a hideous heat wave. “It was hot!” Dratch said. “You had to drink all this water, and keep your hat on, and go inside every 15 minutes. But it was all worth it.”

Among those at the opening night, which included a packed after-party at Belvedere Castle, were Will Forte, Phylicia Rashad, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kristine Nielson, Norbert Leo-Butz, Ben Walker, and Becky Ann Baker, who plays Hannah’s mom on Girls.

Baker just finished her own Shakespeare in the Park stint, in A Comedy of Errors. “That’s why I smell like bug spray, because I knew,” she told us. “I think I put enough bug spray on for my entire section.”

Baker is currently shooting *Girls’*Season Three, in which, she says, we’ll get to meet Hannah’s grandmother. “We have one episode where my sisters show up and my mother shows up,” Baker said. “I can’t tell you the context, but they’re really fantastic.”

She also says that Lena Dunham’s dog, Lamby, has made an appearance on set, and it is cute. “She rescued this dog; it looks like a high-end, Upper East Side frou-frou,” Baker said. “I mean, it’s a really adorable dog.”